We spent a couple of days anchored out front of Luganville again, but strong winds made it pretty ugly, and since we didn’t really need anything in town at the time we decided to move back down to our little private island resort anchorage again. There we’d be out of the wind and surrounded by beautiful coral for a few days while we waited for the coming calmer weather and our weather window to say goodbye to Vanuatu and hello to Australia.

There’s lots of soft flowing anemones for the clownfish around here.

The Banded Sea Krait. I’m not a snake lover, but seeing these guys slithering around in the water is always kind of fascinating. They are about three feet long and not particularly thick, yet they are in the water on the hunt for eels, of all things. Almost every eel I’ve ever seen has been much larger than these snakes, but the snake doesn’t care. They paralyze them with a venomous bite, somehow swallow them whole, then head to shore to digest for a few days. They’re fairly docile otherwise, so risk of being bitten by one is virtually nil.

Lunch break.

As predicted, the forecast continued to moderate, and it was time to move on. We headed back up to town, two hours away, and set about doing our final provisioning and clearing out.

Immigration was the first stop. Filled out a stack of forms, which were all basically copies of forms we filled out when we arrived, and the forms we filled out online before we arrived. Offices all around Vanuatu have a sheaf of Bumfuzzle paperwork that they can safely file away for all eternity.

Customs was in a sprawling building where every whisper echoed indefinitely down the empty halls. They were efficient and had us on our way in thirty minutes. I wouldn’t want to be around when a cruise ship docked outside their window, though.

Back at the boat we hoisted the anchor and then the sails, and made our way south through the channel between islands leading us out to open ocean again. Our timing couldn’t have been worse. Despite both motors and full sails, our speed through the incoming tide was 2.5 knots. Vanuatu was doing its best to keep us from leaving.

While not a total surprise, I will say that Vanuatu exceeded all of our expectations. It is a beautiful country, and probably one of the best cruising grounds anywhere. Short distances between well-protected bays, and good holding anchorages were everywhere. The people here were exceptionally welcoming and friendly to us cruisers and made us feel at home everywhere we visited. Overall, Vanuatu was just a fantastic experience, and one we’re very glad to have made.

Once out at sea we had twelve hundred miles of this in front of us.